Shanghai Noirhttp://inkstonepress.com
Thu, 17 Jan 2019 18:52:20 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=5.0.3https://i0.wp.com/inkstonepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/cropped-AA1315523.jpg?fit=32%2C32Shanghai Noirhttp://inkstonepress.com
3232122086299How to Get Losthttp://inkstonepress.com/2019/01/16/how-to-get-lost-round-the-world/
Wed, 16 Jan 2019 14:00:11 +0000http://inkstonepress.com/?p=2992I have done a fair amount of traveling in my time. Most of Europe, parts of Asia, the United States, of course. But a round-the-world trip is a whole other thing. Our plan is simple. To start from home and keep on going until we make it back. Easy, right? Yes, if you’re a free … Continue reading "How to Get Lost"

]]>I have done a fair amount of traveling in my time. Most of Europe, parts of Asia, the United States, of course. But a round-the-world trip is a whole other thing. Our plan is simple. To start from home and keep on going until we make it back. Easy, right?
By A. A. Milne (writer), E. H. Shepard (illustrator) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Yes, if you’re a free spirit. As the gurus say, it’s not the destination but the journey you seek. Yes, if you’re 20-something with a good back and an ability to sleep under all conditions. You go with the flow and if you happen to miss that monumental place that Everyone Must See, no sweat. The 20 year old can always go back.

But my husband and I will be doddering 60 year olds by the time this round-the-world adventure starts. He doesn’t sleep well if there’s a lot of ambient noise, say, from carousers in the street below. I like a nice hot bath at the end of a long day. Some of the places I have in mind are so far away, it’s now or never. Can I have it all?

Down Under

The idea for a round-the-world trip started with The Fatal Shore. Robert Hughes is the author of this historiography of Australia in the days when it was a penal colony. That dark past fascinated me as did the notion that Australians still long for parity with the mother country. I thought, this I have to see.

But my Australian friends tell me it’s no picnic to get there. It’ll cost you one whole day, give or take a few hours, to fly from Amsterdam to Sydney. And it’s impossible to get there from here without stopping somewhere along the way. My friends do their layovers in Asia: Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur. The idea of a multi-country journey was born. I would start in China.

China

Then I saw the US State Department’s latest travel advisory on China.

Exercise increased caution in China due to arbitrary enforcement of local laws as well as special restrictions on dual U.S.-Chinese nationals. […] U.S.-Chinese citizens and U.S. citizens of Chinese heritage may be subject to additional scrutiny and harassment, and China may prevent the U.S. Embassy from providing consular services.

The Canadian government has raised its warning level to high following China’s decision to impose the death penalty on a Canadian citizen being held on drug charges. Although neither the US nor Canada will say so publicly, the assumption is that China is retaliating for the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, currently awaiting extradition from Canada to the US.

If my face is not enough to trigger heightened scrutiny in China, there are my blog posts critical of its policy. Now, it may be foolish of me to think that China has the time to follow small fry like me. But my most popular blog post continues to be a piece on the Chinese penal system. The idea of eyes on me gives me the creeps.

Planning

So instead we’ll split our time among Asia, Oceania and South America. Start the round-the-world journey in the fall and return home in the spring. Head from east to west. The true adventurer would wing the rest.

But I’m a planner. I need to work out ahead of time how to get from A to B, the distances and the detours, and where to stop for gas, coffee, or a great view. You’ll never find me at a museum or restaurant closed the day of our visit. And though I try not to schedule ourselves 24/7, even for the downtime I’ll have options ready. Given my anal-retentive nature, my instinct is to plan our round-the-world trip like a military operation. But maybe I’d be missing the point?

Alain de Botton is a Swiss philosopher who believes that travel can be more than fun. It can also be therapeutic.

all of us are involved in one way or another on what could be termed ‘an inner journey’: that is, we’re trying to develop in particular ways. We might be searching for how to be calmer or how to find a way to rethink our goals; we might long for a greater sense of confidence or an escape from debilitating feelings of envy. Ideally, where we go should help us with our attempts at these steps in our psychological evolution. The outer journey should assist us with the inner one.

Letting Go

Let’s say you’re the sort of person who hates to ask directions from a stranger, who would never approach a group of unknown people at a party, who in the face of anything alien will always retreat. For you, De Botton recommends a visit to a corner shop in Yokohama, Japan. Not once or twice but as many times as it takes to learn to overcome your inhibitions. First, you go into the store to buy a prepaid mobile card, an excruciating experience as you speak no Japanese and Mr. Nishimura speaks no English. Then, you return for wasabi-flavored crisps and another time for chocolate biscuits. Sooner or later you’ll learn to communicate with your newest friend, Mr. Nishimura.

Yokohama would be good for me. I like communicating, as the Dutch would say, with my hands and feet. To see how inventive, crazy, and undignified I can be. Like the time my husband and I landed in an izakaya in Fukuoka, Japan with no one who spoke English. We knew that the specialty was chicken skewers and so we ordered that. The waitress frowned. Which part of the chicken did we want? We ordered by flapping our wings and slapping our thighs.

But this may sound too much like fun to De Botton. Travel should be about growth and fixing things that are broken. I’m not sure I have any goals that fall into either category. But I do want this: to break out of my comfort zone.

I’ve done this before. By leaving the US and later abandoning my legal career, I’ve forced myself to reinvent, adapt, take risks. I want to know what happens this time when I let go of everything that defines me today. To venture off into the sunset without knowing what the next day will bring. A round-the-world trip sounds exciting and exhausting. Surely this will be fodder for my writing.

But I don’t mean to write restaurant reviews or scenic drive descriptions. No lists of the good, the bad, or the ugly. I want my imagination to roam free. Who can say what happens next?

]]>2992Food Fighthttp://inkstonepress.com/2019/01/09/food-fight-search-authentic-chinese-food/
Wed, 09 Jan 2019 11:27:54 +0000http://inkstonepress.com/?p=2972There’s a hilarious scene in Portnoy’s Complaint in which Alexander Portnoy mulls over the mysteries of Chinese food. the Lord has lifted the ban on pork dishes for the obedient children of Israel [but] the eating of lobster Cantonese is considered by God (Whose mouthpiece on earth, in matters pertaining to food, is my Mom) … Continue reading "Food Fight"

]]>There’s a hilarious scene in Portnoy’s Complaint in which Alexander Portnoy mulls over the mysteries of Chinese food.

the Lord has lifted the ban on pork dishes for the obedient children of Israel [but] the eating of lobster Cantonese is considered by God (Whose mouthpiece on earth, in matters pertaining to food, is my Mom) to be totally out of the question. Why we can eat pig on Pell Street and not at home is because … frankly I still haven’t got the whole thing figured out

Philip Roth, Portnoy’s Complaint. Random House (New York, 1967)

Is it authentic jianbing? Photo credit Karen Kao

Odds are, however, that the food the Portnoys were eating would be unrecognizable to Chinese people in China. The egg foo young, the sweet and sour pork, or the stir-fry featuring a mystery meat drowned in soy sauce. As my mother would say, it’s the kind of Chinese food only Americans would eat.

Here in the Netherlands, we Chinese foodies jump onto our bicycles when we hear a famous Sichuan chef is cooking tonight. Word spreads quickly via WeChat when an Amsterdam outfit starts selling jianbing, a popular Chinese street food. But we keep our expectations in check. After all, the food might not be authentic after all.

Authentic Chinese Food

But what exactly is authenticity? The Cleaver Quarterly recently asked that question in “Authentically What?“, a round table discussion about Chinese food in all its hyphenated and un-hyphenated forms. The Cleaver Quarterly is an online journal devoted to Chinese food as it’s made and eaten in China and throughout the Chinese diaspora. Their definition of authenticity isn’t measured by proximity to the mother ship. It’s about taste, discernment, and tender loving care. To them, you can find authentic Chinese food in an Arizona hole-in-the-wall called Chino Bandido (your choice of rice or beans) or in the form of a giant Dutch-Chinese spring roll coated in peanut sauce, sambal and ketjap manis.

This might sound like heresy to the Food Authenticity Police but as the saying goes, food migrates. Sometimes it’s Mother Nature who blows a few stray seeds your way. Sometimes it takes a whole galleon of Spaniards to execute the Columbian Exchange. The arrival of Christopher Columbus in the New World sparked a global transfer of plants, animals, and microbes, just as the Silk Road was a conduit for people and their foods to cross into China.

Many of the things we think of as uniquely Sichuanese emerged from the blend of Western ingredients with the culinary techniques from northern and eastern China. Take doubanjiang, a fermented fava bean paste described as the “soul of Sichuan food.” Fava beans only came into Sichuan in the 10th century from the Middle East. Same with sesame. And although people think of Sichuanese as a fiery cuisine, the chilli pepper only arrived in the 17th century from Mexico

Beans versus Rice

Alright, let’s concede the point that some ingredients of the Chinese kitchen might not be native to China. But surely there is a certain palate development unique to China? Well, I suppose that depends on which part of China you mean. In the north, they eat wheat. In the south, they eat rice. Food in Hong Kong bears little relation to what you eat in Harbin.

Jiaozi. Photo and cooking credit: Paul Verhagen

But, of course, you already know that. You know the difference between a Sichuan hot pot and Xinjiang BBQ, Cantonese dim sum from Shanghai-style dumplings. In short, you understand that all food is local. But did you know that it’s also deeply personal?

Meet Paul Gepts. He’s a professor of plant sciences at the University of California at Davis. He calls himself Mr. Bean. According to Gepts, bean eaters are creatures of habit. If it doesn’t look like the beans they grew up with, they won’t eat it. So, too, Chinese food fans. If it doesn’t taste the way Mom made it, it can’t be authentic. Does this mean that authenticity is a purely subjective concept? No, says Peter Kim, executive director of the Museum of Food and Drink (MOFAD) in Brooklyn, New York.

the question really ought not be, “Is this food authentic?” but rather, “For whom is this food authentic? And for what time is this food authentic?”

Peter Kim, panelist in “Authentically What?”

Feeding the Homies

Roy Choi and I came of age in the same city though a decade apart. His mother, like mine, was a wicked cook. In Korean, they call it sohn-maash. Flavors in their fingertips. His book, L.A. Son, is part memoir, part ode and, most importantly, a cookbook.

You’ll find straight-up Korean fare like abalone porridge made from anchovy stock and raw eggs. If you’re an Angeleno, your heart will warm to the chili spaghetti (Bob’s Big Boy), chorizo, and “Chinatown Almond Cookies”. For sure, there’s nothing “authentic” about these recipes and yet they taste like home, the one I remember.

If home is where the heart is, the kitchen must be just out back. You cook with what you have: the ingredients you recognize in the grocery store or on the shoulder of the road. You nibble on the strange ones until you find something that jolts a memory.

In China, McDonald’s and KFC are on the rise for the same reason they’re so popular in the West. Processed food is a fast and easy way to fill their stomachs. But never fear. At KFC China you can get congee for breakfast and Portuguese egg tarts for dessert. The next time I’m in Shanghai, I’m ordering the Old Peking Roll. Apparently, it’s a fried chicken tender bedded with scallions and Peking duck sauce, wrapped inside a tortilla. How’s that for authentic Chinese food?

]]>29722018 | My Year in Foodhttp://inkstonepress.com/2019/01/02/2018-year-food-eating-dangerously/
Wed, 02 Jan 2019 09:15:56 +0000http://inkstonepress.com/?p=2929In 2018, I published no books and made no book tours. What the hell did I do with my time? I wrote and traveled, read and gardened. But above all, I ate. So why not take a look back at 2018 and a sneak preview of what’s to come in 2019 by way of my … Continue reading "2018 | My Year in Food"

]]>In 2018, I published no books and made no book tours. What the hell did I do with my time? I wrote and traveled, read and gardened. But above all, I ate. So why not take a look back at 2018 and a sneak preview of what’s to come in 2019 by way of my dinner plate?

Problem is: I don’t like to take pictures of my food. It’s there to eat, isn’t it? So we’ll have to take a roundabout route to food located near and far.

Wanderlust

Ottolenghi, Islington, London. Photo credit: Karen Kao

Let’s start in London, January 2018. My husband and I are en route to visit No. 2 son at Oxford University. But first, we have to make a pilgrimage to one of the many Ottolenghi restaurants in London. I love to cook from his cookbook Jerusalem.

Back home, I fulfill a long-held wish: a two-day class on sourdough bread. We bake baguette, boule de blanc, rye, multigrain, and bread with raisins and nuts. This class transforms my way of baking though somehow bread remains a work in progress. Or, maybe I’m just slow.

Between loaves, there’s just enough time to organize a little reading despite the hiccup along the way.

Then the next trip comes up. This one takes us to windy Leeuwarden in the north of the Netherlands. Our goal is the Mata Hari exhibit. We find joy instead in a ceramics museum and a great little restaurant called Eindeloos.

The End of an Era

But all good things do come to an end. In April 2018, we lose my mother-in-law. We give her the kind of send-off she would have wanted. A full-on Catholic service, a warm reception for her guests, and an elegant family dinner at her favorite restaurant.

#bookstagram. Photo credit: Karen Kao

With endings also come beginnings. In 2018, I discover the #bookstagram. Another first is a podcast with the effervescent Dieuwke van Turenhout. We discuss “An Afternoon at the Bakery,” a Yoko Ogawa’s short story that’s all about strawberry shortcakes.

By now, it’s summer 2018 and time to travel again. We meet my BFF and her husband in Bergen, Norway where we tour the fjords, marvel at the graffiti, and eat ourselves silly. Alas, I have no shots of our Nordic fare at Restaurant 1877 or Lysverket. Instead, I give you “The Daily Spoon.” Norwegian artist Stian Korntved Ruud spent a year and a lot of wood making these 365 spoons.

Home Again

Harvest 2018. Photo credit: Karen Kao

Back at home in Amsterdam, I find my garden in riotous bloom. For the first time since I started planting vegetables, I get an actual harvest of cherry tomatoes, long beans, and herbs galore. I’m still an amateur (idiot) gardener and therefore have an idiot app to guide me. Makkelijke Moestuin tells me when to sow my seeds, warns me to water, stake, and harvest my plants, and will even tell me when it’s time to pull up roots and plant something new.

In the ladies’ room at Fonda San Miguel. Photo credit: Karen Kao

But I let my tomatoes rot on the vine because it’s time for our last trip of the year. This one takes us to Los Angeles, where I find some surprising treasures, and the Great State of Texas.

I don’t need to tell anyone about Texas BBQ. But do you know about Fonda San Miguel? In addition to great Mexican food, there’s a to-die-for art collection. This little gem hangs in the ladies restroom. Check out her inscription: I like two kinds of men domestic and imported.

For the first time in a long time, coming home means starting a new job. After much hemming and hawing, I take the plunge. In October 2018, I teach my first creative writing workshop. In order to bribe my students into liking me, I bake something every week. It’s mostly sweet and sourdough-based (I have to do something with all that starter) though my students give me the additional challenges of gluten and ovo-free diets.

Christmas dessert. Photo credit: Paul Verhagen

Then comes the Blue Wave and a round of prize nominations. Before I know it, 2018 is almost over though not without food to mark that passing. No. 1 son takes charge of Christmas dinner. He produces a magnificent rack of venison in a chocolate-blueberry sauce and this angelic dessert. It’s cardamom panna cotta in a rose syrup with candied pistachios and a caramel tuile.

From 2018 to 2019

What will the new year bring? I’m hoping more of the same. 2018 was a good year for me, full of firsts and lasts, new places and old, readings and writings. I could have just as easily written this blog to show you all the great art I saw or the wonderful books I read in 2018.

As good as 2018 was for me, I think 2019 might be even better. For one, I hope (!) to finish my novel Peace Court and send it out into the world. For another, I intend to further my cunning plan to collect as many rejections as I possibly can for my short fiction, nonfiction, and in-between-fiction-and-nonfiction work.

But more than anything else, 2019 is going to be the year of travel. Not just little hops about Europe but all the way around the world. Yes, boys and girls, this little old lady is headed off-road. I’m still in the planning phase so not much to say at this point. As this trip shapes up, you’ll hear more about it in this blog. And once we’re airborne, this blog may become erratic but so will my life.

]]>2929Lantern Festivalhttp://inkstonepress.com/2018/12/26/lantern-festival/
Wed, 26 Dec 2018 11:08:57 +0000http://inkstonepress.com/?p=2878When I was a kid, my mother would string Chinese lanterns through our Christmas tree. There were maybe a dozen of those little white lights, each one painted and tasseled. I think they blinked, too. I remember sitting in front of that tree celebrating my very own lantern festival. Traditionally, Chinese lanterns are made with … Continue reading "Lantern Festival"

When I was a kid, my mother would string Chinese lanterns through our Christmas tree. There were maybe a dozen of those little white lights, each one painted and tasseled. I think they blinked, too. I remember sitting in front of that tree celebrating my very own lantern festival.

Traditionally, Chinese lanterns are made with bamboo frames over which paper or silk is tightly wrapped. Other variations include porcelain, glass jars, and even test tubes. Some are small enough for a child to carry while others can stand as tall as a building.

There are lantern festivals all over the world. In Thailand, locals light lanterns to honor Buddha. Other festivals commemorate the dead. In China, the lantern festival is a moment to foster peace, reconciliation, and forgiveness. The Chinese call it the Yuan Xiao Festival. They celebrate it on the fifteenth day of the new year.

Yuan Xiao Festival

No one knows exactly when or why the Lantern Festival began. One myth says that the Jade Emperor got angry because someone had killed his goose. So he ordered a town to be burnt. A fairy told the townspeople to light lanterns and hang them all over town. The emperor went away, thinking the town was already in flame.

Pandasia, Ouwehands Zoo. Photo credit: Karen Kao

The next Chinese Lantern Festival falls on 19 February 2019. But here in Holland, the party has already begun. The Ouwehands Zoo sits in the middle of the country, not far from the city of Utrecht. Its claim to fame is a pair of pandas, the only ones resident in the Netherlands. But what do pandas have to do with a Chinese lantern festival?

One link is geographic. Pandas come from a narrow strip of bamboo forest in the mountains of Sichuan Province. Zigong, a town in the same province, is famous for its lantern makers. But there’s more.

To many in the west, the animal represents wildlife conservation […], poor sexual performance and perhaps comedic kung-fu cartoons. In China it is a majestic “national treasure” that embodies the country’s benign nature, uniqueness and ancient culture.

Panda Power

The Chinese have used pandas for diplomatic purposes at least since 695AD when the Empress Wu Zetian gave a pair of pandas to Japan. In 1941, China gave pandas to the United States in thanks for wartime aid against Japan. In 1972, Mao Zedong sent a pair of pandas following Richard Nixon’s visit to China.

Today, panda diplomacy is one of the many ways in which China works to improve its image abroad and thus its ability to influence world affairs. Those efforts include the Belt and Road Initiative to promote economic integration through Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe, as well as its significant developmental aid. These investments are seen as China’s effort to build up enough goodwill to turn it into soft power.

Soft power, a term coined by Harvard University scholar Joseph S. Nye Jr. in 1990, is the means by which a country gets other countries to “want what it wants.”

The traditional forms of soft power are cultural. For the US, that was Hollywood movies. In China, we’re talking about Confucius Institutes to teach Mandarin, a booming film industry to spread Chinese culture, and pop culture icons like the pianist Lang Lang. And that’s where pandas and lantern festivals come into play.

Dutch Treat

China no longer gives away its pandas. Instead, China loans them for a ten year stint at a fee of US$ one million per year. All biological material produced by the pandas, including blood, semen, fur, and offspring, remains Chinese property. Loan terms include construction of special panda enclosure, the use of Chinese experts to oversee the bears, and purchasing the bamboo used to feed the pandas from China.

In the case of the Netherlands, the panda loan required 15 years of negotiations and preparation, including visits by 3 Dutch prime ministers and a request from King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima. This loan coincided with a major trade deal in 2017 whereby the Netherlands will provide advanced healthcare services to China.

Xi personally signs off on every panda loan to a foreign country, according to several people with knowledge of the process. But before he decides whether to grant a country pandas or not, China requires the foreign head of state — the queen of Denmark, Angela Merkel herself — to ask for the bears in person. People involved say the convoluted negotiations and personal involvement of a foreign leader remind them of ancient rituals in which Chinese emperors would receive barbarian supplicants.

Jamil Anderlini, ibid

What’s been given can also be taken away. In 2010, China repatriated two panda cubs born in US zoos. This in retaliation for US President Barack Obama meeting with the Dalai Lama.

China Light Festival

Pandasia. Photo credit: Karen Kao

Wu Wen and Xing Ya arrived at Ouwehand Zoo in May 2017. They live in a custom-built enclosure called Pandasia. It looks like a Ming Dynasty palace. The ground floor is panda territory. The top two floors are for their guests to eat Chinese food and buy panda-branded merchandise.

Pandasia was where we assembled for the VIP opening of the China Light Festival. Artisans had come from Zigong, Sichuan Province, to construct roughly 50 Chinese lantern displays. Most of the guests that evening were under the age of 12. So the VIPs must have been the zoo director, Robin de Lange, and the Minister Counselor of the Chinese Embassy, Chen Ribiao.

De Lange spoke of the zoo’s obligations to promote Chinese culture under the panda loan agreement. To date, he said, Ouwehands Zoo has organized lion dances, ceramic bowl painting and, now, a lantern festival. Counselor Chen spoke of the need to familiarize the Dutch people with Chinese culture. He called it people-to-people exchanges.

The Festival Route

So what was I doing among the VIPs, big and small? I helped write the brochure for this year’s festival together with my Chinese teacher, Sha Sha Liu. The idea was to explain the various lanterns along the festival route. What they represent or their significance to the Chinese culture. Not to talk about panda diplomacy.

So here’s a sampling of what we said about the pretty lights:

Temple of Heaven, China Light Festival. Photo credit: Karen Kao

This girl has come to visit the Temple of Heaven, one of China’s best-known monuments inside the Forbidden City in Beijing. Once an altar complex for the personal use of the emperor, the Temple of Heaven is now part of a park where ordinary Chinese can come to dance, play checkers or practice martial arts.

Journey to the West is one of China’s most beloved books. Written during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), it tells the tale of the monk Xuanzhang who travels to India to bring Buddhism to China. Sun Wukong, the monkey king, is supposed to protect the monk. But he’s a real rascal. When the monkey king is given the task of guarding the celestial peach garden, he eats them all.

Chinese lanterns, like the history they depict, are full of tricksters. You can use lanterns to fool an emperor or an old monk. Or to light your way to the panda enclosure where you can think about the cuddly Chinese. But, hey, the lights are pretty, aren’t they?

]]>2878It’s All About Mehttp://inkstonepress.com/2018/12/19/its-all-about-me-memoir-autofiction/
Wed, 19 Dec 2018 09:43:14 +0000http://inkstonepress.com/?p=2904Memoir is hot these days. Michelle Obama’s Belonging is at the top of the New York Times bestseller list. Educated, a memoir written by Tara Westover, follows close behind. Last month, I sat in on a memoir writing class. Not because I want to write my life’s story but to cheer on the teacher, Ellen … Continue reading "It’s All About Me"

Memoir is hot these days. Michelle Obama’s Belonging is at the top of the New York Times bestseller list. Educated, a memoir written by Tara Westover, follows close behind. Last month, I sat in on a memoir writing class. Not because I want to write my life’s story but to cheer on the teacher, Ellen Keith, a fellow faculty member at the International Writers’ Collective.

Memoir belongs to the genre of creative nonfiction, a broad tent that holds many circus animals: personal essay, travel narrative, memoir, blog, and autobiography. Unlike autobiography, which generally spans an entire lifetime, memoir is more thematic, focusing on a particular phase. It uses the same building blocks as fiction: a strong narrative voice and a story told in scenes.

It made me wonder: where does memoir end and fiction begin? Then Ellen distracted me with a hermit crab exercise.

Hermit crab essays adopt already existing forms as the container for the writing at hand, such as the essay in the form of a “to-do” list, or a field guide, or a recipe. Hermit crabs are creatures born without their own shells to protect them; they need to find empty shells to inhabit

Hermit crabs exist in fiction, too. Think of Lydia Davis and her “Letters“. I wrote a hermit crab piece that day in Ellen’s class and was pleased with it. But when I got home, I took another look. Had I written a work of fiction or nonfiction?

Autofiction

Autofiction is a term coined in 1977 by Serge Dubrowsky. He was trying to distinguish his novel Fils from autobiography, which in his mind was a genre reserved for the Very Important. Nowadays, the term is applied to

contemporary authors—Knausgaard, Ben Lerner, and Sheila Heti, among others—whose “reality effects” create a strong sense of immediacy on the page, so that very little seems to separate the reader from the writer’s experience.

David Wallace, “‘Liveblog’ and the Limits of Autofiction,” The New Yorker, Nov. 29, 2018

In other words, the author is drawing from his own life, using recognizably autobiographical details, blurring the distinction between writer, narrator, and character. The concept is not at all new.

why do we need a unique term for this movement in contemporary literature, if authors have always used their own lives as inspiration for their work?

Is It True?

If anything, a label like autofiction encourages readers to lift the veil. Is this story is true? Which character are you? If you’re Jamie Quatro, your readers want to know what your husband thinks of your illicit sex stories. That is to say, did you do any of that stuff? My response to all that is so what? In fiction, you don’t get extra points for truth.

But in nonfiction, truth is the whole ball of wax. You don’t get to put words into a source’s mouth, create composite characters or compress multiple interviews into one efficient chat. You can’t make it up.

Image source: Wikimedia

So I look again at my little hermit crab and I’m still not so sure which species it is. My friend, the poet, asks what difference does it make? I cite the submission guidelines used by literary journals; you can only tick one box, fiction or nonfiction. The pragmatic poet says, submit it as both and see which one gets accepted.

Still, I demur. I’ve got the skeleton on paper. Do I now add a fancy dress, top hat, and cowboy boots? Or do I stare into the mirror and try to conjure up my youthful self?

Memory

Memory is a slippery substance. What we remember may be the whole truth, a half-truth, or an utter lie. We often remember the telling of a memory better than the event itself. Even if I wanted to, it’s not so easy to recall events that took place 2 or 12 or 20 years ago.

It’s far easier to embellish as a novelist would. To put people in the room who were never there or words in their mouth that come out of your own. But that’s not how nonfiction works.

factual writing is like returning from a grocery store with materials you intend to cook for dinner. You set them out on the kitchen counter, and what’s there is what you deal with, and all you deal with. If something is red and globular, you don’t call it a tomato if it’s a bell pepper.

I heed McPhee’s advice. I work with what I have and not what I want. At the same time, the novelist in me demands scenes and details: the color of his eyes and the taste of her chewing gum. My characterization must be accurate and alive. I want the reader to be moved, not because my work is true to my life, but because it could also be true to his.

On Lying

Dina Nayeri is the author of Refuge, a novel with visible ties to Nayeri’s own life. It’s the story of an Iranian girl who escapes to America, leaving her father behind in Iran. Nayeri acknowledges that her protagonist is loosely based on her father, just as she admits to examining her mother regularly in fiction and essay.

I love to write auto-fiction: it is, I believe, the purest, most powerful way to tell an honest story.

Truth, however, is in the eye of the beholder. Nayeri’s father can accept the idea that his truth may differ from his daughter’s. To Nayeri’s mother, on the other hand, there can only be facts and lies. Nayeri makes no apology though she does acknowledge her debt.

I take too much from my parents.

Idem

Memoir and autofiction have in common the power to hurt those we love. There’s a reason why most novels open with the disingenuous disclaimer.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Most of us don’t write with the intent to wound. Most of us, like Nayeri, are simply trying to solve the puzzle of our own life.

My little hermit crab might be a work of autofiction or it may be a bit of memoir. It doesn’t matter. I’m mining my life in service of a larger truth. If my hermit crab piece ever gets published I’ll let you know which shell it fell into.

]]>2904Lady Bankershttp://inkstonepress.com/2018/12/12/lady-bankers-shanghai-womens-bank/
Wed, 12 Dec 2018 08:55:07 +0000http://inkstonepress.com/?p=2816As a former lady lawyer, I’m sympathetic to professional women trying to make it in this day and age. Imagine, then, what that must have been like in 1920s Shanghai. The Shanghai Women’s Bank opened its doors in 1924. A woman founded that bank. She staffed it exclusively with women to cater to the specific … Continue reading "Lady Bankers"

]]>As a former lady lawyer, I’m sympathetic to professional women trying to make it in this day and age. Imagine, then, what that must have been like in 1920s Shanghai. The Shanghai Women’s Bank opened its doors in 1924. A woman founded that bank. She staffed it exclusively with women to cater to the specific needs of a growing market of female customers. Wealthy women, to be sure, but even they came in all sizes and shapes. Adeline Yen Mah, author of the memoir Falling Leaves, describes the customers.

spinster daughters, with their inheritance and nest-eggs; first wives (called big wives), with their dowries and winnings from mah-jong; concubines(called little wives), with cash presents from their men; and professional and educated women, who were tired of being patronized at male-dominated establishments.

At the time, arranged marriages, child brides and concubinage were still legal. A married woman was expected to obey her husband, a daughter submitted to the will of her father, a widow to the dictates of her son. I must have been stunned by the idea of a women’s bank in that day and age because I used it in my debut novel, The Dancing Girl and the Turtle.

Then I forgot about both the woman and her bank until I got a call last week from Tony Hsu. In 2016, Tony published Chasing the Modern, a biography of his grandfather, the Chinese poet Xu Zhimo. Xu’s first wife, Zhang Youyi, was an integral part of Xu’s story as well as a major influence on Tony’s life.

It so happens that Zhang was also involved with the Shanghai Women’s Bank. It seemed as if the gods were telling me to look into that bank one more time.

what’s in a name?

The woman who founded the Shanghai Women’s Bank goes by many names: Miss S.Y. Nyien, Yen Shu-Ho, Yan Shunzhen and Yan Shuhe. Her bank also has various names like the Shanghai Women’s Commercial and Savings Bank, the Shanghai Women’s Savings Bank and the Shanghai Women’s Business Bank.

Let’s call her Miss Yen. According to her grandniece, Miss Yen attended the elite McTyeire School for Girls. She was fluent in English, baptized a Christian and cut a mean figure astride a horse. Her bank made it into the New York Times under the heading: “Women’s Bank in China. Native Ladies of Shanghai Run One Exclusively for Their Sex.” According to John H. Nelson, Assistance Trade Commissioner at Shanghai, the purpose of the bank was to employ Chinese women and encourage them to save. Though, he added, the Shanghai Women’s Bank would also perform the functions of an American pawn shop.

It is a common practice for Chinese women to pawn their jewelry when in need of money.

Shanghai Women’s Bank

Miss Yen had a six story building constructed to house her bank. It was located at 480 Nanking Road, close to the financial district on the Bund. Miss Yen lived in the sixth floor penthouse apartment, together with her friend Miss Guang, three maids, a cook, and a chauffeur. Female bank staff lived in the dormitories in the other upper floors.

Many women worked at the Shanghai Women’s Bank, including Adeline Yen Mah’s mother, Ren Yong-Ping, and her beloved Auntie Baba. Some online sources identify other co-founders or managers, but the name that crops up most often is Zhang Youyi, Tony Hsu’s grandmother.

Zhang came from a well-connected family. Her second oldest brother, Zhang Junmai, was an influential statesman and philosopher. Her fourth oldest brother, Zhang Jiaao, was a banker. Tony Hsu believes that it was Zhang Jiaao who introduced his grandmother to the Shanghai Women’s Bank.

She would have been a considerable asset to the bank. Zhang spoke some French, fluent German and, of course, Shanghainese. In 1927, she became a Vice-President of the Shanghai Women’s Bank.

Zhang did not live at the bank. Like my own grandfather did two decades earlier, she had a house built on Avenue Haig. Hsu describes it as part of an enclave of homes for bankers and other professionals. He lived there as toddler in the late 1940s, around the same time my father would leave his home on Avenue Haig for the wider world.

the long goodbye

The late 1940s were a time of turmoil in China. The war with Japan ended in 1945 and with it any need for the Nationalists and Communists to present a united front. The Chinese Civil War began.

In 1946, Zhang Youyi and Miss Yen were both still active at the Shanghai Women’s Bank. Yen Mah recalls her family’s uncertainty:

Every other family with property, Kuomintang ties or even western professional training agonized over what to do next: to stay or to go. For established businessmen with homes, offices, families, friends, and guanxi (connections), the choice was particularly hard.

Falling Leaves, p. 86-87

Zhang left. She took her grandchildren to Canton, Macau then Hong Kong in 1949. By then, most of the Yen family had also departed China. Miss Yen stayed. She couldn’t bear parting with her bank.

At first, it seemed the right gamble. It was business as usual once the Communists took over. Then the campaigns began against corruption, capitalism, and counter-revolutionaries.

In 1952, struggle meetings were started against my Grand Aunt to ‘assist her in interpreting her past waywardness’ and ‘give her the opportunity to correct her mistakes’. Many of her former employees denounced her. Some went along to save their own skin. Her guilty verdict was a foregone conclusion.

Falling Leaves, p. 198

The Shanghai Women’s Bank was nationalized in 1955. Miss Yen lived through the Great Leap Forward, the famine it caused, the Cultural Revolution and the opening of China. She died in 1975.

the bank today

My Zhang Xiaoquan scissors. Photo credit: Karen Kao

Today, the ISBC Nanjing East Branch stands at the former site of the Shanghai Women’s Bank. One of many commercial establishments along the busy pedestrianized ares of Nanjing Lu East, it’s easy to miss in the lines for its more famous neighbor, the Zhang Xiaoquan Scissors Shop.

I’ve been to that shop. I love my scissors. It never occurred to me to wonder about the history that was made just next door by a small group of lady bankers.

]]>2816Fork & Knifehttp://inkstonepress.com/2018/12/05/fork-knife-chopstick-kid/
Wed, 05 Dec 2018 09:29:47 +0000http://inkstonepress.com/?p=2596The other day, I had a chat conversation about the word sommelier. One chat member had never heard it and went to look it up. Then the guy who introduced the term into the conversation confessed that he, too, had looked it up before using it in our chat. The subject of that chat was … Continue reading "Fork & Knife"

]]>The other day, I had a chat conversation about the word sommelier. One chat member had never heard it and went to look it up. Then the guy who introduced the term into the conversation confessed that he, too, had looked it up before using it in our chat. The subject of that chat was an upcoming Christmas potluck dinner and who would bring the wine.

Of course, a sommelier does more than deliver the bottle to the table. If asked, he (and it’s usually a man) will offer suggestions on the wine that would best match the food that’s been ordered. He may talk about wine as oily or mineral with notes of citrus or red berries. He might wax eloquent on the provenance, the exact grape sorts, the peculiar meteorological conditions of the terroir and the use (or not) of oak casks.

I listen to it all and nod wisely. But since I have almost no alcohol tolerance, neither the conversation nor the wine flows in my direction. My husband is the drinker, er, wine connoisseur. He taught me about sommeliers. Talking about the word made me realize how very far I am from home.

chopsticks

In my childhood home, we ate Chinese food 362 days of the year. On the other three days, my brothers and I celebrated our respective birthdays. For those special occasions, we were given the right to choose what to eat. That invariably ended at a McDonald’s for chicken nuggets with honey mustard sauce, large fries and a vanilla shake.

The rest of the time we used chopsticks. Even today, after a lifetime in Amsterdam, I can clack with the best of them. I may not be quick enough to catch a fly as Pat Morita did in The Karate Kid. But in the kitchen chopsticks are my go-to utensil for everything from grilling steaks to baking bread.

I distinctly remember the first time I used a fork and knife in public. It was Disneyland, Christmas 1972. I was thirteen years old. My classmates and I ate spaghetti somewhere outside of Frontierland. I suppose I acquitted myself alright because if I hadn’t, I’m sure I would have blocked the memory.

pretty woman

There’s a great scene in the film Pretty Woman where Hector Elizondo teaches Julia Roberts about forks and knives. She’s about to go on a dinner date with Richard Gere and is terrified of picking up the wrong one.

I know this feeling. When I was looking for a job in my third year of law school, the interview process was an all-day affair. Back-to-back questions about the law and my goals in life. Lunch was a continuation of that grilling but worse. That’s when you were also tested on your social skills. To engage in polite conversation, handle yourself with aplomb and use the right knife and fork.

That summer there was a story making the rounds. An applicant was taken for lunch to a Chinese restaurant. When the pancakes for the mu shu pork arrived, she mistook them for a hot towel to wipe the sweat from her face. Ha, I thought, at least I’ll never make that mistake.

mystery fork

Photo credit: Karen Kao

My husband is pretty good with a knife and fork. Not so much with chopsticks. Whenever we eat Chinese food, whether at a restaurant or at home, you can always tell where he sat by the bits of food left orbiting his plate.

But he was no Hector Elizondo to my Julia Roberts. Instead, it was his mother who taught me what was what. She was a great cook in the classical French style. A dinner party at her home always consisted of a half dozen courses, each requiring its own fork, knife and/or spoon. As a young newlywed, I was eager to please and so I would offer to help set the table. She would lay one full setting and I would copy her work.

When she died earlier this year, my task was to inventory the contents of her home. Tables and chairs, lamps and books, kitchen utensils: all no problem. But when I got to her silver cabinet, I was stumped. There was a fork that looked like a miniature trident with a long twisted handle. Turns out you use that to fish for olives. There were spoons in all shapes and sizes, only one of which was proper for ginger in syrup. Who knew?

the silver cabinet

Now my mother-in-law’s silver cabinet sits in my dining room. Like her, I use it to store my forks and knives. While she made a bed of cotton for her silver, I’ve lined those drawers with green felt and little holders to keep each fork and knife in its place.

In case you’re wondering whether I’ve renounced my Chinese roots, have no fear. I’ve got fancy chopsticks, some in ivory with cloisonne handles and others in teak with silver tips. Special chopsticks holders I brought back from Japan and a beautiful set of china fit for a Chinese banquet that was given to me by my Mom. But these things have their own special place in my life and it’s not inside the silver cabinet.

From chopstick kid to the proud owner of a silver fork specially designed for cold cuts, I’ve come a long way, baby.

]]>2596Prizehttp://inkstonepress.com/2018/11/28/prize/
Wed, 28 Nov 2018 09:07:12 +0000http://inkstonepress.com/?p=2557When my debut novel was about to be born, my publisher and I worked out a PR strategy. Her preferred modus is to enter contests. My faithful readers will recall my attempt to get myself onto the shortlist of the Not the Booker Prize, a contest run by The Guardian. You may surmise by the … Continue reading "Prize"

]]>When my debut novel was about to be born, my publisher and I worked out a PR strategy. Her preferred modus is to enter contests. My faithful readers will recall my attempt to get myself onto the shortlist of the Not the Booker Prize, a contest run by The Guardian. You may surmise by the subsequent silence that I did not win. In fact, of the seven contests my publisher and I entered, we won none of them.

That losing streak is over. Two months ago, The Shanghai Literary Reviewnominated my essay “Memory Palace” for the Best of the Net anthology 2018. Just this week, I heard that nunum.ca nominated “Frogs“, a flash fiction story, for the Pushcart Prize. Never heard of either prize? Well, here’s the lowdown.

pushcart prize

The Pushcart Prize is a political venture. It was founded back in the seventies by Bill Henderson, then an editor at Doubleday. It was his response to the commercialization of Big Publishing. In a moment of entrepreneurial genius, Henderson published a guide that encouraged writers to form their own independent presses. Then he launched the Pushcart Prize to honor their work.

little magazine and small book press editors throughout the world. We also accept nominations from our staff of distinguished Contributing Editors. The nominations may be any combination of poetry, short stories, essays, memoirs or stand-alone excerpts from novels. We welcome translations, reprints and both traditional and experimental writing.

There’s no definition of little or small, no entry fee or application form. Just send in a hard copy of the work nominated and hold your breath.

synchronicity

The prize is publication in the Pushcart Prize anthology. To date, Henderson has published 42 issues. This is more than a labor of love; it’s a gargantuan task. The 2018 anthology involved 6 Guest Editors, 200 Contributing Editors and two new staffers who undoubtedly had the unenviable task of reading every submission.

Is it a weird coincidence to find so many friends and acquaintances listed in the pages of this year’s anthology? Sally Wen Mao, fellow Napa Valley workshop student, was a poetry Guest Editor. Napa Valley teacher Camille Dungy won a Pushcart year for her poem, “Natural History,” while my friend, Francisco Cantú, got an honorable mention for his essay “Crossing the Rio Grande.”

The International Writers’ Collective, where I now teach, uses the Pushcart anthologies to illuminate the craft of writing. I workshopped “Frogs” in a Level III class and look what happened.

win or lose

But it’s a long road from nomination to selection. My friend Dipika Mukherjee is another nominee for her flash fiction piece “Bangkok 1956.” Dipika shared her great news on Facebook, then added a word of warning.

Thank you for the cheering folks! Have to caution everyone here that loads of writers get nominated for a pushcart but very few actually win one

Dipika’s friend, Toni Nealie, got nominated, too. Jet Fuel Review chose her short story “Bloom.” This isn’t the first time Toni’s been nominated so she’s got a perspective.

The first time I thought, no big deal, but then I thought – how awesome. Whether I win or not is irrelevant. I’m in good company and just being nominated is recognition of work.

I totally agree. Someone I might otherwise never reach is going to read my work. Maybe it’s one of those overworked staffers; maybe it’s both of them. But if my work gets past their desk, who knows who might lay eyes on my little story?

Secretly, of course, I do hope to win. Because that would lead to even more eyes on my work, including agents, publishers and countless new readers. In yet another moment of synchronicity, my old poetry professor, later US Poet Laureate, showed up on the Pushcart website with this quote:

“A Pushcart Prize selection is one of the very best things that could happen to a writer.”

Charles Wright

best of the net

Like the Pushcart Prize, the Best of the Net anthology is trying to make a point. Sundress Publications, an independent non-profit press based in Knoxville, Tennessee, runs the contest. From the anthology title alone, you’ll understand that Best of the Net exclusively profiles work that first appeared online

a venue that continues to see less respect from such yearly anthologies as the Pushcart and Best American series. This anthology serves to bring greater respect to an innovative and continually expanding medium in the same medium in which it is published.

Authors who self-publish are free to nominate their own work. Otherwise it’s the editor of the publication (journal, chapbook, online press, etc) who decides. So I count my blessings that The Shanghai Literary Review chose to throw my name into the hat.

Now it’s time for the Best of the Net army to get to work. There’s one judge, one coordinator and dozens of readers for each of the three categories respectively of poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction. For Best of the Net, I’m gunning for the non-fiction prize.

a circle

It’s not impossible that Sundress Publications came into being, inspired or even guided by the work of Bill Henderson. And though Best of the Net is trying to offer a counterbalance to awards like the Pushcart Prize, they’re both about offering a platform to great writing that might otherwise go unread.

A nomination feels so much better than applying for a literary prize myself. Someone out there thinks my work is good enough for a nomination. That someone is staking their reputation on me. It’s a vindication of all that hard work and proof that the cycle of submission and rejection will eventually get me to where I want to go. As Raymond Carver once wrote to Bill Henderson:

the mere fact that someone was publishing my work in whatever form was an indication to me that somebody cared.

The Best of the Net finalists will be announced in the spring of 2019. It looks like the Pushcart Prize winners won’t be known until the fall of 2019. Far enough away for me to forget about these nominations. So no gnawing off my arm, yet. Keep you posted.

]]>2557Maps of Chinahttp://inkstonepress.com/2018/11/21/maps-china-politics-borders/
Wed, 21 Nov 2018 08:50:37 +0000http://inkstonepress.com/?p=2047Two maps of Shanghai hang on the walls of my study. One is an 1875 reproduction. Frenchtown curls around the Chinese City while the International Settlement sprawls on top. The other map is handmade, enlarged so that it covers my bulletin board. I’ve superimposed the names of the past onto the streets of the present. … Continue reading "Maps of China"

]]>Two maps of Shanghai hang on the walls of my study. One is an 1875 reproduction. Frenchtown curls around the Chinese City while the International Settlement sprawls on top.

My map of Shanghai

The other map is handmade, enlarged so that it covers my bulletin board. I’ve superimposed the names of the past onto the streets of the present. It’s a mind map into my novels, The Shanghai Quartet.

You can use maps for more than finding the way. China, for example, weaponizes its maps.

century of humiliation

Image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unequal_treaty

The idea of maps as weapons starts with China’s Century of Humiliation. In 1839, the British sent gunboats up the Yangtze River to force China to open its markets to trade. The First Opium War, according to China analyst Alison Kaufman,

marked China’s first sustained exposure to the West, and highlighted imperial China’s military and diplomatic weakness in the face of Western power.

The shock to the Chinese worldview cannot be overestimated.

Those shock waves reverberate well into the present. The Chinese Communist Party is seen as

the only modern Chinese political party that was able to successfully stand up to foreign aggression.

Moreover, the losses suffered during the Century of Humiliation – territory, control and international standing – have yet to be rectified.

historical maps

Loss of territory is where the sensitive subject of maps arises. Since the heyday of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), China has reasserted its control over Tibet, Xinjiang, and Hong Kong. But there is more work to be done. Kaufman asserts:

the view is nearly unanimous that the losses of the Century of Humiliation will not be fully rectified until Taiwan is returned to the mainland.

In 2014, Angela Merkel gave a map of China to Xi Jinping. It was an antique, printed in 1735 and drawn by the French cartographer Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville. As Rachel Lu of the Sydney Morning Herald reported: the map was historically accurate but politically all wrong.

that is, the Chinese heartland mostly populated by ethnic Han people, without Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia, or Manchuria. The islands of Taiwan and Hainan — the latter clearly part of modern China, the former very much disputed — are shown with a different colour border.

Xi was not amused. Nor was China’s official media outlet. But rather than express outrage

The People’s Daily, which has given meticulous accounts of Xi’s European tour, elided any coverage of the offending map.

Then things got weird. Two different maps circulated online. The new map showed China at its zenith

including Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia and large swaths of Siberia. This larger map was the handiwork of British mapmaker John Dower, published in 1844 by Henry Teesdale & Co. in London, and was certainly not the gift from Merkel to Xi. But this mistake was not noted or explained in Chinese reports.

modern maps

All this might be an amusing anecdote but for other, less entertaining, adventures with maps. According to Louisa Lim of the Little Red Podcast, non-Chinese academics are being pressured

to ensure their maps show territorial boundaries which align with Beijing’s worldview.

Problems with maps arise, of course, whenever depicting Taiwan as a sovereign state. But apparently there are also sensitivities regarding the border between China and India. Pressure comes in the form of student protests or anonymous harassment on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter.

But given the tiny readership of most academic journals, perhaps a few inaccurate maps won’t matter. John Zinda, an environmental sociologist at Cornell University, disagrees.

One of the key things here is that, as with any form of propaganda, if people see enough maps that represent Chinese territory as the Chinese state sees it, that becomes accepted more and more as common sense.

In the meantime, multinational corporations from Marriott, Zara, Quantas and Delta Airlines no longer list Hong Kong or Taiwan as countries on their websites.

nautical maps

The South China Sea is a busy place. One third of the world’s maritime trade passes through. It is also the subject of completing territorial claims by China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Brunei.

The “nine-dash line” came into existence during the Republic of China (1912-1949). It’s not entirely clear whether those dashes are intended to show sovereignty, jurisdiction or some conflation thereof.

China expert Howard French reads the nine-dash line as China’s version of the Monroe Doctrine, an exclusive sphere of interest. Look at the construction of military outposts on islets in the South China Sea. Remember that it is China’s mission to recover territories lost during the Century of Humiliation. This is more than a debate among maritime lawyers.

The nine-dash line is now printed in the passports of Chinese citizens and stamped on globes manufactured in China and sold in American stores.

The Shanghai Quartet is going to be my magnum opus: four interlocking novels spanning a quarter century of Chinese history. Volume one was my my debut novel, The Dancing Girl and the Turtle. I’ve just finished the manuscript for volume two, Peace Court. While I await feedback from my beta readers, my mind wanders to volume three. I see Laogai as a collection of interlocking short stories. But what exactly is that and, more importantly, how do I write them?

Definition

Writing short fiction is notoriously difficult. You have to accelerate from zero to sixty miles an hour in the space of a few sentences. A short story is often more about what’s not said than what is. According to author Baird Hunter, that’s what makes the short story so powerful.

the ambiguities on which short form often insists, in the white spaces of section breaks and in the big dark void at the end.

But not all writers can carry off the short form. Author Sonja Chung is embarrassed by most of the short stories that marked the launch of her publishing career. She calls the novel her true medium.

All that room, the freedom to move among settings, cultures, time periods, points of view. The license to spend three or four years working on something, keeping notebooks full of ideas and sketches and scenes, filtering anything and everything through the lens of The Novel I’m Working On; indulging my mind and imagination in layers of world and character and idea.

The interlocking or linked story collection falls somewhere in between a short story and the novel. GrubStreet calls the linked story collection

a strange animal: each story should be able to stand on its own, but the collection speaks louder when read back-to-front. The structure is more flexible than a novel, and the writer can leave more room for the reader to fill in mysteries and gaps. Linked story collections allow the writer to endlessly circle around her own obsessions in new fresh ways, whether that obsession is a theme, a character, or a place.

Is interlocking for me?

Like Chung, I think of myself primarily as a novelist who dabbles in short fiction. We both like to read interlocking short stories. Where we differ is when it comes to writing a linked collection. To Chung, it’s a craft exercise. To author Michael Knight, the linked collection bursts with possibilities.

[By] featuring recurring characters and settings and themes […] the book achieves a kind of aggregate, novelistic force, a collection, in other words, that adds up to something even more potent than the power of its component parts.

I imagine that this power lies in the seemingly random way in which one story touches another. Earlier this year, I saw an installation by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot of ceramic bowls set adrift in a pool of water. The bowls were all different sizes, giving off a range of tones whenever they hit the side of the pool or each other. A chain reaction sparked by random acts.

Yet I’m sure there was nothing random about it, just as a linked short story collection must have some interlocking device. My gut tells me that a novel about a laogai needs to be told in the form of separate and distinct stories. For to be imprisoned in such a place is to be alone.

An object

The linchpin of The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra is a painting: Empty Pasture in Afternoon. Over the course of five linked stories, this painting is defaced, bombed, sold, stolen, and restored. We recognize the subject matter of the painting as the setting of two other stories. Marra’s intention was

to try to take these completely unconnected stories and find a way of making them feel so intertwined that if you lost one, the whole structure of the book would collapse.

To date, I’ve made only one feeble attempt at transporting an item from one story into another. In my short story “Moon Cakes,” a mother sells her daughter into slavery. As the daughter embarks on her new life, the mother gives her an agate pendant.

That girl grows up to become the cook Jin, who appears in my debut novel The Dancing Girl and the Turtle. You won’t see that pendant in my first novel but you will in the second, Peace Court, when Jin passes it on to her own daughter Li.

I’ve thought about introducing some object into Peace Court that might reappear in Laogai. It would need to be something dangerous like a book. But in a place like a Chinese labor camp, there can be no possessions.

A moment in time

Image source: Goodreads

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is about the Vietnam War. A few of the stories are told in the moment. But mostly, the survivors look back. They try to piece together what happened. They do their best to honor the fallen with their stories. And, as in the worst nightmares, they relive their experiences in the hope that the outcome will be different.

“In the Field” plays out in the immediate aftermath of a mortar attack. Alpha Company is pinned down in what turns out to be the village shit field.

Everything was black and wet. The field just exploded. Rain and slop and shrapnel, nowhere to run, and all they could do was worm down into the slime and cover up and wait.

We relive that moment three times through the eyes of a different combatant. The soldier who’s certain he’s caused the death of his best friend. The commanding officer determined to recover the body. The soldier whose task it’s become to tell this story.

I’d love to find such a cataclysmic moment in the life of a laogai. As China scholar Frank Dikötter observes:

the most dreaded aspect of incarceration was not the frequent beatings, the hard labour or even the grinding hunger. It was the thought reform, referred to by one victim as a ‘carefully cultivated Auschwitz of the mind’. […] Those who resisted the process committed suicide. Those who survived it renounced being themselves.

Men fought monumental battles in the shit fields of the laogai. But these were private affairs without witness.

A sense of place

http://www.amos-oz.net/books/between-friends/

Amos Oz uses place to link his collection Between Friends. His characters live and work in Kibbutz Yikhat. They work in the laundry or the shoe repair shop. Some feed the chickens while others tend the vegetable garden. They play cards in the dining hall to pass the time and judgment on each other.

The kibbutzim rarely leave the grounds and really, why would they? The kibbutz is a world unto itself.

I think that sense of place must be my interlocking device. A laogai, after all, is also a closed environment intended to be utterly self-sufficient. Cut off from all communication with the outside world, the men of the laogai must invent their own myths. How they came to be in the place and the life they’ll lead when they get out.

Here’s how the stories will go. See Guard Tuan keeping watch from on top of the ridge as the prisoners sow millet in the trenches below. Hear the whispers at night about the veterinarian who cured the camp commandant with a trick. Watch the prisoner Kang try to write a letter home.